But when she had daughter Felicity at home in Aigburth just over two weeks ago, the sensation was unmistakeable.

“It wasn’t like a normal orgasm at first,” says Clare. “It was a more prolonged build-up of feeling.

“I was very relaxed about being in labour and as I went into active labour, I started to feel really zoned out as the endorphins kicked in.

“I had a birthing pool and was sitting in that and as the contractions came, I was kissing my husband. We were just really relaxed, laughing and chatting.

“That amplified the loved-up feeling and I started feeling quite unlike myself.”

“When I was pushing, it really started to feel like an orgasm,” Clare recalls. “I started to feel really good, a kind of satisfying feeling, and when the baby crowned, there was a a rush that left me breathless.”

“I was on a complete high for three or four days afterwards,” adds Clare. “I’m still on a high now.”

Clare is one of a growing band of women breaking one of the last taboos – that childbirth can be more about ecstasy than agony.

A documentary called Orgasmic Birth aired on ABC 20/20 in America earlier this year and is being shown at film screenings across the world, including in the UK.

It features a mum from Hawaii, Amber Hartnell, experiencing an orgasmic birth, which she later described as an “ecstatic state”.

For the millions of women who’ve screamed for an epidural, this might seem not so much unlikely as downright impossible, but Clare stresses that she too, didn’t feel any pain. “It was a very intense sensation, but it wasn’t pain.”

And for those who are still unconvinced, Clare explains that orgasmic birth isn’t as unlikely as people might think because the hormone, oxytocin, that’s released during sex is also released during childbirth. "It's the love hormone," says Clare.

Clare’s orgasmic birth was a million miles away from her first experience of having a baby.

Helena, two, was born in Liverpool Women’s Hospital after Clare was transferred there with high blood pressure.

“I’d planned to have a home birth, but I actually had a panic attack when the midwife gave me gas and air and my blood pressure went through the roof, so she decided to send me to hospital.”

Second time around, Clare booked the services of a doula, a woman who offers practical and emotional support to a woman – and her partner – before, during and after childbirth.

“I knew Selina because she’d supported a couple of my friends during their births,” says Clare. “I met her about once every six weeks for six months and we just chatted and I told her my concerns.”

When it came to actually giving birth, Selina was there to support Clare practically, by doing things like giving her a massage, and was, says Clare, “somebody to talk to.”

“Your husband is very emotionally involved in the process, but the doula is at a remove from the situation. She acts as an observer, but is also very experienced and you know that she would know what do to do if something started to go wrong.”

Clare’s doula, Selina Nylander, has attended 17 births and says that Clare’s is the first orgasmic birth she has witnessed.

“There’s a saying that what gets the baby in, gets the baby out,” says Selina, adding that privacy and romance help conception and help labour too.

“You’re much more likely to have an orgasmic birth at home.”

Selina, who has been a registered doula since 2005, says that the aim of the doula is to reduce the level of intervention in the birth.

Most of the births she has attended have been in hospital, but she’ll try to keep the mum at home for as long as possible and keep things as relaxed as possible.

“We’ll use natural pain relief, I’ll cook her a beef bourgignon, maybe go for a walk.

“Then if we have to go into hospital, I’ll try to recreate the relaxed environment there.”

Clare is planning to have more children and would hope to have an orgasmic birth again.

“But every experience is different.

“There’s this image of childbirth on TV with women screaming in agony and breaking their husband’s hand.

“But it doesn’t have to be like that and more women should know that.”